


let me be the calm you seek

by NightsMeridian



Series: Slivers of hope [2]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Hope is always worth clinging to, I didn't tag this major character death because really its in the summary, Some Fluff, otherwise, post 3x05, with payoff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-10
Updated: 2017-11-10
Packaged: 2019-01-31 09:18:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12678933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightsMeridian/pseuds/NightsMeridian
Summary: Jeremiah dies on a Monday.





	let me be the calm you seek

**Author's Note:**

> This is the second piece in a series, though they can be read by themselves really. If you keep in mind this is a follow-up to a future fix-it-fic set after 3x05. 
> 
> Because we all could use a little hope sometimes, that'll be the overall theme of this series. I might write more in this same universe if people think it's something worth pursuing. 
> 
> A small note to say that in this fic Jeremiah is a lot more off kilter than in the series, and maybe it's more brainwashing by Cadmus, maybe it's something else, but I thought it would be interesting to explore the option of him no longer being redeemable. 
> 
> Thank you for reading.

* * *

 

 

Jeremiah dies on a Monday.

 

* * *

 

The knock on her door is unexpected.

It causes the stack of files balanced on her lap to tip slightly to one side and slide to the ground and she curses when they go flying everywhere. It’s late, she’s slightly drowsy from the glass of whiskey she has been consuming and she desperately hopes it’s not her neighbour about to bother her about the volume of her tv again. She’s too exhausted to put up with his antics now and considering the tv’s sound level doesn’t surpass background noise at this point, she has half a mind to tell him where to shove his ridiculous complaints.

But a glance through the peephole freezes her in place for a moment. There’s the ominous sound of the thunder rumbling somewhere outside and Maggie entertains the brief thought that it explains Alex’s appearance.

But it doesn’t explain her presence.

She almost yanks open the door and feels her heart further drop in her chest when she sees the utter devastated look in Alex’s eyes. Maggie has only seen it a few times before. And it never spelled anything good. Alex’s hair is a tousled mess, locks stick to her wet cheeks and droplets of rain cling to her eyelashes before sliding down her cheeks and disappearing into the collar of the completely drenched leather jacket she’s wearing.

“Alex? What happened? What’s…”

She doesn’t get the chance to say anything else before Alex suddenly lunges forward and kisses her. It’s a hard, bruising kiss and Maggie gasps at the intensity behind it. She’s vaguely aware of the door closing and Alex pressing her against it. Cold fingertips slip along her cheeks and clutch at the nape of her neck.

Alex moves to her jaw, kissing and nipping at the skin there. Her tongue slides into Maggie’s mouth right afterwards and it steals whatever coherent thoughts are still tumbling around in her mind.

She’s hears Alex’s jacket landing on the floor somewhere with a wet thud, but then they are kissing again and she can’t get enough of Alex. Can’t get enough of the ardent kisses, the searing touches, the heady feeling that always accompanied losing herself into everything that is Alex Danvers.

It’s been weeks, months. Too long.

She slides her tongue along Alex’s and sucks on it for a long moment. Maps the soft warm skin of her jawline and neck. And she remembers, at some point, in the past, how she thought she would never have this again. The closeness, the intensity, the overwhelming love she would always feel for the woman who’s kissing her senseless.

But it’s that same thought that also makes her slow down their kisses.

“A-alex…” she manages to stutter out, unsure of what she is trying to ask. Unsure if she should even be asking any questions at all.

Instead of answering her question, Alex captures her lips again and Maggie can’t help but let out a soft moan at how she’s pushed up against the wall, a leg settling between her own.

But Alex’s kisses taste like desperation, and Maggie’s been there too many times in the past.

They both deserve so much more than meaningless sex up against a wall.

“Alex,” she mutters as she pulls away. “Stop, not like this.”

Her chest is heaving and she can still feel the heavy coil of lust simmering low in her belly.

She sees it in Alex’s eyes the moment it really registers to her. Like she’s hit by a cold spray of water and almost instantly she takes a step away from Maggie.

It shouldn’t feel like a blow to her but it does. And maybe later, when she’s alone again, she would dwell on what it meant. How even weeks after they started trying again a part of her was still stuck in a moment that happened months ago. The utter dejection she felt then.

The utter dejection she feels now when she sees Alex’s whole demeanour change right in front of her.

“I should go.”

It’s the first words Alex has spoken and they sound rough and filled with a kind of sorrow Maggie isn’t able to place.

“Alex no, wait…” She has a hand on Alex’s arm to stop her and Maggie swears she can feel the tightly coiled tension thrumming beneath her clammy skin.

“I shouldn’t have come here,” Alex says, her voice gravelly but weaker than before.

It makes a lump lodge itself in her throat and Maggie turns to face Alex in an attempt to catch her eyes and understand what is going on with her.

The words roll across her lips before she’s able to stop them. “Why did you?”

“It doesn’t matter you don’t want...and I need to…”

Tears suddenly well up in Alex’s eyes and she feels her heart break at the sight.

“That’s not why I…” Maggie sighs. “We’d just end up regretting it in the morning, Danvers. And you know that as well as I do. What’s really going on?”

She’s surprised when Alex’s expression completely crumbles and she turns around and falls down on the couch, hiding her head in her hands. Her shoulder shake with the force of her crying and Maggie feels her heart clench. An invisible band tightens across her chest and it’s sharp, almost knife-like how much Alex’s overwhelming grief crashes into her.

She sits down next to Alex and moves an arm across her shoulder until she can pull Alex’s trembling body half onto her lap.

“Alex…oh sweetie, what happened?”

“It’s...it’s m-my dad,” Alex stutters out in between sobs and Maggie just holds her tighter, letting Alex’s head rest on her lap while she cards her fingers through Alex’s damp hair.

“He’s gone.”

 

* * *

 

Maggie stares at the rain clattering against the window as she blows softly across her mug of scalding hot tea. She can see the reflection of a hunched over Alex, eyes fixated on her own mug, seemingly lost in thought.

The storm and the wind howling outside makes the silence inside the apartment feel more and more oppressive, until a sudden “I’m sorry,” from Alex causes Maggie to take a sharp intake of breath in response. “About before..”

“You wanted to feel something,” Maggie more states than asks.

She hopes Alex won’t bring it up again, or it would spill into recalling how she’s been there in the past, how she has lost herself in meaningless one night stands. Sometimes she was okay afterwards, but more often than not, she would feel some kind of regrets in the morning.

She doesn’t want this for them, not after they have tried to mend their relationship in the past few weeks. Their first time after being apart for so long shouldn’t be some cheap fling against a wall, out of desperation.

“I did,” Alex speaks up again and Maggie turns around and places her mug on the coffee table next to Alex’s own.

She sits down quietly and studies the pained expression on Alex’s face, the puffiness of her eyes, the barely dried tear-tracks.

“I just feel numb. Everything...I don’t get how it all fell apart so quickly, and my d..my dad,” Alex chokes out in a pained voice.

“I’m sorry.”

She doesn’t know what else to say. She doesn’t even know what to do with the knowledge that this will chafe at Alex. How she didn’t even get to have any sort of closure. How she lost her dad for the second time in her life and almost none of the recent memories are even the good ones.

“I just..I’m so...confused. Angry,” Alex mutters out, fists balling at her sides as she suddenly stands up from the couch and starts to pace along the length of Maggie’s living room.

“I miss him and I’m angry about missing him,” Alex continues and Maggie swallows at the helpless rage that shines in misty brown eyes.

“He was still your dad…”  
  
“He was going to kill Kara,” Alex hisses in a pained tone. “I saw him stab her and he was going to kill her and I just...I froze. I couldn’t even shoot him. I just...couldn’t.”

Fresh tears spill across her cheeks and Maggie pushes herself off to the couch to wrap her arms around Alex. Some tears of her own well up and slide down her face when Alex helplessly burrows into her side and sobs.

Eventually she manages to steer them back towards the couch. She quietly holds Alex until she loses track of time and it’s hours later when she grabs the discarded quilt and pulls it across both of their bodies.

 

* * *

 

She wakes up to the beams of sunlight streaming in from the window, bathing her apartment in a soft orange glow.

A quick glance around confirms she’s alone again and Maggie can’t help but feel a twinge of disappointment.

Even with how much they had talked about their future and trying to work their way back to each other, she can’t help but feel there’s still some distance between them. And she doesn’t know how to fix it.

She grabs the half-empty mugs of tea still sitting on the coffee table and only then notices the hastily scribbled note stuck underneath one of them.

It’s barely readable, but it still brings a smile to her face

 

* * *

 

“Any change in her condition?” Maggie queries in a low voice as she enters the room.

Alex’s soft shake of her head is all the answer she needs and Maggie swallows and flicks her eyes over the injured superhero.

Kara is deathly pale, cheeks gaunt and Maggie struggles to reconcile this image with the perky superhero zipping through the skies like an overexcited puppy. The steady beeping of the machines keeping her alive and the breathing mask covering most of her face causes her stomach to turn.

She’s seen her share of hospitalized people, both victims and colleagues, but she’d become close to Kara and had started to seen her as family. And hearing about Kara being injured and actually seeing it were still two entirely different things.

It’s almost a shock to her system to know that Kara might never wake up again and her throat constricts painfully at the thought.

“Mind if I sit down?”

“No, it’s fine, my mom won’t be back until later tonight and I could really use the company.”

Maggie nods and sits down on one of the empty chairs next to where Alex is sitting.

“How you holding up?”

“Better than yesterday,” Alex says, her lips quirking in a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes and vanishes again just as quickly. “Although that doesn’t say much. Mom’s been great but she’s been having a tough time with dad passing away as well.”

She’s silent then and Maggie’s heart breaks when she sees the telltale signs of tears welling up in Alex’s eyes. “I don’t even know what to say to her…” Alex finally chokes out. “How do I even explain to her that some of my last words to him were that I wished he had stayed dead.”

“Alex..” Maggie sees Alex’s hands tremble and she covers them with her own. She laces their fingers together and uses her free hand to brush the tears away from Alex’s cheeks. “We all say things we don’t mean sometimes, you can’t blame yourself for that. You saw him nearly kill your sister and he said some horrible things to you both, no one expects you to stay calm in that kind of situation.”

“I know,” Alex whispers and Maggie is reminded me of that time she had sought out Alex in her apartment after the two aliens had committed suicide. She wonders sometimes how Alex is even able to do it, or if she’s even aware of how she always tries to carry the weight of the world on her shoulders.

“I still meant some of it,” Alex whispers, her eyes flitting to Kara’s unmoving form. “How can I even mourn him, knowing what he did Maggie? Kara nearly died, she might still…”

Shaking her head Alex covers her eyes with her free hand and her throat bobs as she swallows down her choked up sobs.

“Even after we captured him and he said all those things in the holding cell, I kept having hope that there was a way to fix all of it. That we would be able to find something wrong with him and we could turn him back to the father I remember.”

“He was with Cadmus for a long time,” Maggie says, while trying not to think of her own conversation with her dad mere months ago. Some things just couldn’t be fixed.

Though she thinks there’s some kind of irony in Jeremiah’s body giving out without warning, the same thing that brought him back killing him without him ever standing a chance.

“They poisoned his thoughts and brainwashed him into seeing any alien as a threat. It’s how they work, Alex.”

“I know, but seeing him like that...I kept thinking of how I remembered him and I couldn’t reconcile that with the things he was shouting about Kara.” Alex sighs, frees her hand and walks over to the hospital bed. She leans over to place a kiss on Kara’s forehead and whispers something in Kryptonian that Maggie didn’t understand.

“I miss you. Please wake up,” she adds in English a moment later.

Maggie feels as if she’s intruding on a private moment and she quickly looks away from them, taking a slow shuddering breath.

“I didn’t get to thank you properly for yesterday,” Alex says after a minute has passed in silence.

“And you don’t need to,” Maggie responds while gazing at Alex from across the room. “I will always be here for you Alex, you know that.”

“I love you.”

“Yeah,” Maggie whispers, eyes misting up as she lets herself be pulled up by Alex into a gentle embrace. “I love you too.”

 

* * *

 

“What’s on your mind?” Maggie says after she’s watches Alex play around with her fries for some time.

“Just thinking,” Alex murmurs while she stares out of the window.

The burger place is quiet this time of the day and Maggie relishes the privacy of the corner booth they claimed for themselves. Away from the DEO and the long week they have spent so far at Kara’s bedside, hoping for a miracle.

“J’onn insists I go home for the night.”

“He only wants what’s best for you,” she replies while squeezing Alex’s hand that's circling a deep indentation in the dirty wooden tabletop. “And he’s right. You need to take care of yourself, Alex. And you know Kara would be saying the same thing.”

Suddenly Alex’s eyes flick up and lock onto hers and it’s as if all the breath is knocked out of her. There’s a naked kind of intensity in those soulful brown eyes as they bore into her own and Maggie knows Alex is building up to something.

“I don’t want to be alone tonight,” Alex finally breathes out.

Maggie swallows thickly. “You want me to stay over?”

“Please?”

She nods and swallows once more when Alex leans in and slides the tips of her fingers across her jaw and frames Maggie’s face between her hands. Soft lips capture her own for a moment and Maggie breathes out heavily once they separate again.

“I missed you,” Alex whispers against her lips, “and I know I shouldn’t really ask this of you, not with… But I don’t know what I would do if you weren’t here with me, Maggie. If Kara dies..I..”

“Shh,” Maggie hushes her and she leans their foreheads together, grateful once more that they are away from prying eyes.

She presses butterfly kisses to Alex’s eyelids and enjoys the quiet moment between them.

And for the first time in weeks, her heart feels a little lighter.

 

* * *

 

The wind rustling through the leaves of the nearby trees is the only sound breaking the tranquil silence enveloping them as they stand in front of the gravestone.

Alex hasn’t really spoken more than two words since they exited the car and she’s struggled with what to say during their walk through the cemetery.

Maggie watches her kneel down and touch the name engraved in the gravestone almost reverently. Silent tears slide along her face, clinging to her chin before falling down in the still damp grass. She whispers something that gets lost in the wind and Maggie feels a lump shoot up in her throat when Alex closes her eyes and lets out a heartrending sob.

She still doesn’t really know what to say, but she takes a few steps towards Alex and places a hand on her shoulder. Alex flashes her a watery smile in return and squeezes the hand, more tears making their way down her cheeks.

And Maggie thinks that sometimes it’s not about words at all.

 

* * *

 

It’s only the second time she is in this room all by herself and it’s still a bit surreal for her to see Kara like this. This...fragile, when all she’s ever known her as was the girl of steel. The only time she remembers seeing some chinks in that sunny exterior was during her panic episode after her encounter with Psi and some weeks after that when they talked about Krypton and how Kara was still dealing with the loss of her home planet almost every day.

The room has a lot more color to it than the very first time she set foot in it and Maggie can’t help but smile at the amount of get well wishes, photos and trinkets that litter the walls.

She knows it will warm Kara’s heart when she sees them.

When, not if. Because the refuses to entertain the thought of her never waking up.

But it’s still a thing that haunts her all the time. Both her and Alex, like an invisible cloud overhead following them both wherever they go. She knows it breaks Alex’s heart every time she enters the room. And every time she leaves again, with there having been no change in Kara’s condition.

She swallows thickly and grabs one of the chairs near the wall, pushing it closer to the bed so she can sit right next to Kara.

When, not if, she thinks again as she grabs hold of one of her hands. Because if anyone’s a fighter it’s Kara.

“Alex needs you to wake up,” she starts with a soft whisper, her throat tight with welled up emotion. “ _I_ need you to wake up.”

She smiles for a second and leans in to place a kiss on the crown of Kara’s head. “Because I still want to marry that nerd of a sister of yours and we need you there to drive us both crazy with your wedding planning. We need you there when we go house hunting in the future, because we’re definitely going to get a dog eventually and they’d need a nice backyard to freely run around in.”

She chuckles for a moment and traces circles on the back of Kara’s hand.

“I was going to say we need you there when we pick out a dog as well but knowing you, we’d end up taking the whole shelter home with us. So maybe that’s not a good idea.”

She looks at Kara again, her features slack in her comatose state and recalls the last time she saw Kara smiling. She prays that it won’t be the last time she saw it.

“Just...wake up, please” she whispers as her eyes cloud over.

She sits back down, and the steady beeping and the hum of the machines makes the silence that greets her even more jarring.

 

* * *

 

“Go back to sleep.”

Maggie is surprised for a moment, then she chuckles and peers at a groggy Alex Danvers, half rolled on her side to face her.

“Sorry, did I wake you up?”

“Yeah you were thinking really loudly,” Alex mutters with a sly smile.

She snorts, moves her hand so she can sift through Alex’s short crop of hair and places a brief kiss on her lips as she gazes into the sleepy brown eyes staring up at her.

“Hmm yeah just a lot on my mind I guess.”

“Like?”

She looks away from Alex at the question, the inquisitive and almost tender look in her eyes making her think of the weeks, months they’ve spent fighting their way back to each other. It’s not something she wants to be interrupted by the thoughts that have been tumbling through her head lately. The plans she’s been quietly, slowly, making for their future together. Especially because the last time she did, everything came crashing down on her.

And she’s still picking up the pieces even now.

“I…”

She tucks her chin to her chest and plays with the comforter draped across her body. It’s not as if she doesn’t want to talk about it, it’s more how she’s nervous to start down this road again, when it led to such heartbreak before.

“Hey,” Alex whispers and she feels the tips of her fingers caress the skin around her jaw and chin, tilting it softly so she’s forced to look Alex in the eyes. “Talk to me.”

“I still want to marry you,” she blurts out before she can think better of it.

“Oh,” Alex murmurs and for a moment Maggie isn’t sure what to think about that answer, especially when Alex looks away.

But then a smile curves her lips upwards and once Alex looks at her again a second later, it’s with almost sparkling eyes. She leans over and captures her lips and Maggie moans helplessly when she immediately feels Alex deepen the kiss.

When it ends again she’s breathless and she can’t help the dopey grin that seems to be permanently plastered on her face. Alex has rolled on top of her and is bracing herself on her elbows, every now and then placing kisses along her neck and collarbone.

“So I guess that’s a yes?”

“No that’s a; you need come up with a better proposal if you want to marry me,” Alex replies with a teasing smirk and Maggie swats at her.

“Ass,” she jokes and smiles into the kiss Alex presses against her lips. “But fine, I’ll think of something,” she says while sliding her hand to the nape of Alex’s neck and bringing her in for another, longer kiss.

“Later though,” she murmurs while rolling them over.

 

* * *

 

She wakes up close to the edge of dawn with a groan. The shrill noise of the ringtone on Alex’s phone echoes through the bedroom as Alex fumbles to answer it.

She sees Alex’s expression change from grumpy annoyance to something akin to surprise and then there’s tears in her eyes and the phone drops back down on the bed as her body starts to shake.

 

* * *

 

Kara wakes up on a Thursday.

 

 

 


End file.
